The Taste of Winter

To really taste winter is to have a bad memory flash in the back of your head, each and every time you see snow. The memory itself is frozen in time, as if hidden in the isolating coldness only the winter snow can produce. Seeing the outside world totally engulfed in snow makes you feel small and suffocated. The taste of winter leaves your mouth dry and your throat tight, as if you're choked on the words to say. It has a bad after-taste, and it's the reason many people are cold-hearted and hopeless during the winter months. It's not so much the beginning of the winter season as it is the end. You see, in the time between November and December there are many warm, loving holidays to look forward to, such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is the time between January and February that there is nothing to look forward to but the nipping cold and the soft groan of the wind. Even as a sit here and write this, I can here my own, quiet house creak and the wind whispering on the other side of glass windows. To really taste winter is ironically like tasting snow. The snow, itself, is aesthetic, however, the taste is bland and really indescribable. All you can taste is how cold and empty it feels, much like how a bad memory feels. I suppose the only way you can really shake off bad memories is to slowly overcome them at your own pace, lettinghow the wounds heal over. Much like how one waits for the snow to thaw out when spring tenderly embraces the world around them.